[NTLUG:Discuss] High Speed service(s)

[Kelledin]

On Monday 10 March 2003 07:10 am, Douglas King wrote:
> AT&T CAN be set up WITHOUT that screwy CD, I have done so
> personally.  You have to configure the web browser to hit
> there "proxy" server in order to register. I finally got a
> tech guy that actually had a brain one day, and he gave me all
> the setup info required to register the MODEM on the AT&T
> network.  That's all they do.

Nice!  I'd really appreciate knowing how to do this, thanx. :)  
In fact, it might be good for us to write a mini-HOWTO about it 
and submit it to tldp.org, but I don't know how happy 
AT&T/ComCast would be about that.  I could easily see them 
invoking DMCA and beating us over the head with it...

I'd also like to know if these little-known details have changed 
with the ComCast switchover.

> Oh, one more thing, YES, the DO change the IP addresses...so 
> far, I have seen random changing.

Our household has kept one IP address throughout our entire time 
as an AT&T customer.  It changed during the AT&T->ComCast 
switch-over, but that's about it.

It seems like if you disconnect and reconnect from AT&T cable, 
they'd let you take the same IP address you had before as long 
as some other box hadn't picked it up while you were offline.  
It's up to your DHCP client to say, "This is the address I had 
before; can I have it again?"  AFAIK this is how most 
DHCP-centric networks work.

> I do not use their network now, because their bandwidth was
> WORSE than my DSL lines.  I tested the lines side by
> side....and AT&T was far worse than DSL.  BEWARE.

The biggest problem with consumer broadband (this exists with 
cable and DSL) is there's no consistency in the service.  You 
may get 4x the bandwidth you're actually paying for, or you may 
have to constantly dance with tech support just to get the 
bandwidth you're entitled to.  Likewise, your connection may 
stay up for weeks straight and go down for less than a minute at 
a time, or it may break every day and take an hour or more to 
reconnect.

-- 
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does 
it still cost four figures to fix?"